<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>unequivocal by Previously8</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25852408">unequivocal</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Previously8/pseuds/Previously8'>Previously8</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Tarot Sequence - K.D. Edwards</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hospitals, I have a lot of feelings about addam and quinn can you blame me??, M/M, Missing Scene, Post-The Tarot Sequence Book 1: The Last Sun, Romance, where romance means they don't kiss but have feelings and hold hands</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-08-12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-08-12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 06:02:43</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,039</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25852408</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Previously8/pseuds/Previously8</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>If Rune is going to have a heart attack thanks to his—well, whatever they are, he supposes a hospital isn’t a bad place for it. </i>
</p><p> </p><p>Or, while Quinn is still comatose during the TLS epilogue, Rune and Addam have a conversation at his bedside and are also almost-boyfriends(?).</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Addam Saint Nicholas &amp; Quinn Saint Nicholas, Rune Saint John/Addam Saint Nicholas</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>25</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>unequivocal</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>So it's been a week since I read the books-- time to write fic, huh?</p><p>I know people are really on the tallasmen sexytrain, but I am a Soft Person who likes Soft Things so y'all are getting feelings about brothers and addam/rune hugging. </p><p>Warnings: allusions to the aftermath of Rune's assault</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Hospitals, no matter how well-maintained, have never been Rune’s favourite places to be. </p><p>The wing he’s in now has relatively little magical imprint, compared to the rest of New Saints. It’s being used as a long-term ward: there are no emergency gurneys rattling through the halls, no desperate bids to battle infection, none of the noise that comes with the code blues that flash like clockwork on nurses’ pagers. The receptionist who had directed him here had looked pitying—long term hospital stays aren’t cheerful generally cheerful things, but her pity had irked him. Possibly because person he’s visiting isn’t in long term care because he needs to be, but rather because Addam was rich enough to buy a place in a calmer wing of the busy hospital. Calm doesn’t mean nice, though, and the blankness of it grates on Rune.</p><p>The walls are clean, the floor is faded green tile, and the windows don’t have flickering bars. Somewhere, there is steady beeping, doubtlessly from various monitors and machines, but Rune can’t see them, hidden as they are behind doors with name cards. One nurse is walking an elderly satyr down the hall. As Rune passes, she smiles, and flickers out of existence like someone turned off an old television. Then there are still some memories, here. Peaceful. Low energy. </p><p>The name he’s looking for is attached to an innocuous room halfway down the main hall. He still feels a moment of apprehension, staring at the door he’s about to go through. Technically, he was only implicitly invited, and that only by virtue of a dream visit from Ciaran, whining desperately. It’s been three days since everything in the Westlands, though, and he’s been decreed stable enough to venture out. The nine feet across have never been enough to pace comfortably. </p><p>Rune sets his shoulders and knocks to push the door open. </p><p>It glides open silently, another privilege of this wing of the hospital—no curtains hanging from metal rings as a scant privacy divider. Two small hospital chairs with washed-out blue cushions are pulled up next to the bed. Addam, sat facing his brother, looks larger than life in the spindly seat. Everything about him looks tired—the slump of his wide shoulders, the set of his jaw, even the ponytail gathering the tumbling sandy hair off of his neck. </p><p>He’s cradling Quinn’s hand in his own. It’s almost frightening, how small and pale it looks in Addam’s large, tanned hands. Quinn, still comatose, looks more childlike than usual, dwarfed by the wide hospital bed. He’s breathing shallowly under a thin sheet pulled up to his chest, and his skin is nearly translucent in its pale sallowness. He looks too small, nothing like the enthusiastic and too-friendly fifteen-year-old Rune had met here not long ago.</p><p>Rune hates hospitals. </p><p>He clears his throat.</p><p>Addam looks up from the bedside, startled. “Rune,” he says. There’s a warmth in his voice that Rune admits he’s happy to hear. </p><p>He’s caught, momentarily, in the way that Addam looks. Even now, worn out from a sleepless beside vigil, he is still as handsome as he’s ever been. His burgundy eyes are warm, and though his skin looks waxen under the fluorescents of too much hospital food and not enough sleep, his tired smile sets Rune’s heart beating faster than it should. </p><p>If Rune is going to have a heart attack thanks to his—well, whatever they are, he supposes a hospital isn’t a bad place for it. </p><p>“I brought tea,” he says quickly, shaking himself out of his lovesick musings. He holds up the small tray with two disposable mugs and a paper bag. “I would have brought coffee, but I’m on a strict no-caffeine diet and Brand can smell Starbucks on me from a mile away. So, um, tea.”</p><p>He’d even gone out of his way to a niche little tea shop that didn’t sell coffee, overpriced and aesthetic as it was. The extra three dollars per cup should be enough to make sure he’s not reamed out by Brand, or worse, Queenie, when he gets back for making his jitteriness worse. It had been hard enough to get Brand to agree to let him go in the first place—if he ruins it with coffee, well, he probably won’t be leaving alone for the next few months. </p><p>He can feel Brand’s awareness tick up, through their bond, when Rune thinks of him, so Rune focuses back on Addam instead. </p><p>Addam smiles again. “I’m very grateful,” he says, taking the disposable cup from Rune in one of his calloused hands. “How have you been?”</p><p>“Tired. Jumpy.” Rune shrugs uncomfortably. He still has a lot to think about—a lot that he doesn’t want to think about. There’s more than one reason he’s left the house today, more than one conversation he wants to avoid now that he’s mostly functional again. “Usual post-adrenaline high stuff. I’ve been doing a lot of sleeping.”</p><p>“Apologies, that I did not come by.” His burgundy eyes are wide, honest, like he is actually apologizing for not spending time with Rune while his brother has been in a coma. Ridiculous. Rune’s heart skips a beat anyway.</p><p>“What, so you could watch me nap? I don’t blame you.” He nods to Quinn, still and silent on the bed. “Any change?”</p><p>He’s not hopeful and isn’t surprised when Addam answers with a tired shake of his head. “No,” he says, looking back at his brother. “Not yet.”</p><p>“Has he dream-walked?”</p><p>“I haven’t been asleep long enough to know,” Addam says wryly. “I believe Ciaran is sick of my calls.”</p><p>Rune would tell Addam to go home and sleep—but he’s far from the best model for that. Besides, he had never been able to convince Brand to leave his bedside, not recently and not when he was in hospital twenty years ago. He’d woken, back then, and gotten angry with Brand, snapped at him for lack of anything else to do through the numb haze—and Brand had just told him that he would never let Rune wake alone. That was, of course, when Rune spontaneously remembered how to cry. Brand’s made good on the promise too, even when they stopped sleeping in the same room.</p><p>He pushes away the memories. It was a long time ago, after all—and he’s been much better at avoiding hospitals, since.</p><p>This room, like any other, is permeated with a faint antiseptic smell, a constant, monotone beeping, and the glaring whiteness of walls kept too clean. Quinn’s heart rate monitor is steady, slow. There’s no window; the fluorescents are almost painful, humming gently above. A cart squeaks by in the hall. On the table next to the bed, there’s a single bouquet of bright turquoise and green flowers—a Ciaran staple, if Rune has ever seen one. </p><p>“He looked just like this,” Addam says into the non-silence of the hospital room, “when he was really young. No one thought he would make it, his health was so fragile.”</p><p>“Except you,” Rune offers.</p><p>Addam’s eyes crinkle into a small smile. “Except me.” He looks down at Quinn’s pale hand. Rune wonders if he’s thinking of what he told them—that once, he’d been able to fit Quinn in his palm, he was so small. “I have spent a lot of time in hospitals with him. It’s rarely fun, but I—I would do anything for him.” </p><p>Rune thinks about his hypothesis—the manipulation that Quinn is capable of, the way he manages outcomes, how he made sure that Addam survived and made it out, no matter the cost to himself, or to others. In some ways, he understands Quinn’s devotion to his brother, and vice versa. In many ways, it probably is like his and Brand’s bond, minus the literal shared feelings. </p><p>It can hurt just as much. </p><p>“When I first met him,” Rune says slowly, “he told me that he was the ‘runt of the litter’. That if it weren’t for you, he wouldn’t be here.” </p><p>“That stupid bird show,” Addam says, his pretty face contorted into something almost like a scowl. He looks up at Rune. “Ella put it on. I don’t know exactly what she said to him, but—” he cuts himself off and shakes his head, face clearing. “He has never been anything but valuable, inherently so, to me. Independent of his gifts or his health.”</p><p>There were other parts to that conversation—many of them frustrating, some of them scary—that he doesn’t want to bring up right now. Unconditional love and Devotion, Rune thinks, are dangerous things. </p><p>He doesn’t say so. </p><p>Instead, he tells Addam, “he’s a great kid. You know we’re all grateful for what he did.” He fidgets with the lid on his cold tea. “And I’m no seer, but I know he’ll come back to you. It’s obvious how much he loves you.”</p><p>When Addam doesn’t immediately say anything, Rune looks back up. He’s surprised to see that Addam’s eyes are wet. He’s gazing at Rune with an expression that Rune is hesitant to categorize.</p><p>“Sorry,” Rune says immediately. “I didn’t mean—”</p><p>“Hero,” Addam interrupts, “may I hug you?”</p><p>Rune blinks. “Yeah?”</p><p>Addam puts down his tea on the small table, next to the flowers and envelops Rune in a hug.</p><p>Addam is warm. He smells clean, like expensive bodywash, even after all three days spent in the hospital. Rune raises his arms to hug Addam back, careful not to spill his own tea, which is unfortunately still in his hand. Addam isn’t crying, just breathing deeply and holding Rune to his chest, but a tremor that had been in his shoulders fades as Rune holds him. </p><p>It’s been a long time since Rune has hugged <i>anyone</i> for an extended period of time—brief bouts of cuddling not included—but Addam seems to know exactly what he’s doing. He can feel Addam’s heart beating, like this. Rune tries to calm his own racing heart, sure that it’s a dead giveaway, but does not succeed. Addam drops his forehead onto Rune’s shoulder and takes a few breaths. </p><p>“I have been very worried,” he admits quietly. His breath is a hot air on the side of Rune’s neck. “I don’t think I realized how much.”</p><p>“You’ve been sleeping at the hospital,” Rune says. “That’s a pretty clear indication that you were worried.”</p><p>Addam pulls away, so they are no longer pressed chest to chest. His hands are still on Rune’s waist. “I suppose so,” he agrees. His smile is soft. “Thank you, for coming.” </p><p>“Well,” Rune blusters, “tea.” </p><p>He’s sure his cheeks have turned ruddy—he curses his inability to stop that from happening around pretty men. Lately, that has mostly meant Addam. He clamps down on his companion bond a little harder as a vague sense of amusement filters through. </p><p>Addam laces their fingers together and his voice drops into something less sincere and more flirtatious. “Is that all you came for?” </p><p>“Yes,” he says immediately, without pulling his hand away. It had been his escape lie to Brand—just delivering tea and checking in, no funny business, he’ll be back in two hours. When Addam raises his eyebrows, Rune adds, honestly, “I wanted to see you, too.” Addam looks far too pleased. Rune can’t help but feel warm at the idea that he was looking forward to seeing him too. “You look tired.” </p><p>“I am,” Addam says. His thumb traces small circles on the back of Rune’s hand. </p><p>“Can I convince you to go home and sleep?” </p><p>Addam smiles apologetically and shakes his head. Rune, his ears already ringing with the lecture he’s sure to get when he gets home for doing so, says, “good thing I brought two bagels, then.”</p><p>“What?” Addam has the gall to look surprised. </p><p>“I think I’ll stay,” Rune says squeezing Addam’s hand once, “just for a bit.” He pushes gently back towards Quinn’s bed and Addam steps back, once, twice, until he’s sitting again, looking surprised and pleased. Rune sits on the other. The chair is lumpy and uncomfortable. He makes a face, “I hate hospitals.”</p><p>Addam smiles at him, bright and true. </p><p>Rune nearly chokes on his tea.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>This is me writing what I want to see in the world, i.e. more Quinn, but Quinn is sleeping and doesn't actually take part? whoops. my rune &amp; addam soft bfs and addam &amp; quinn feels took over today</p><p>Please leave a comment to tell me what you thought! It means the world &lt;3</p><p>You can also find me on tumblr @everythingsidfferentupsidedown</p></blockquote></div></div>
</body>
</html>